FRANK STOKES: Downtown Blues

With uncredited second guitar. Take 2, also issued on 21272, is at a different tempo, uses some alternate lyrics, and does not include the reference to 1928. Total sales, according to the Victor production files, were 13,449 copies — so not a particularly rare issue, as regional race records go, although there’s no way of telling for certain how scarce one take may be in relation to the other.

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Blues Fans — Be sure to check out these Mainspring Press titles, if you haven’t already. (We’re nearly sold out of “Paramount’s Rise and Fall,” and won’t be reprinting once the remaining copies are gone — order soon to avoid missing out!)

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One of the most persistent myths surrounding the New York Recording Laboratories (makers of Paramount records) is that the company was never legally incorporated. The misconception stems in part from testimony in a 1936 lawsuit (Wisconsin Chair Co. v. I. G. Ely Co., 91 S.W. 2d 913), in which it was stated — erroneously, as we now know — that NYRL “is not and was not at any time a corporation, a partnership, or an individual.”

However, NYRL was indeed incorporated — in Port Washington, Wisconsin, on July 2, 1917 — as the notarized copy of the incorporation filing shown below confirms. This oversized document (from an early photostat, courtesy of Randy Stehle) is too large and faded to be easily legible online, so we’ve transcribed the most relevant portions at the end of the article.

NYRL did lose its corporate status in 1921, when (along with the United Phonographs Corporation, the original registrants of the Puritan trademark) it was merged with the parent Wisconsin Chair Company. UPC and NYRL were dissolved at that time. UPC was soon scuttled, but NYRL continued to operate, simply as a trade-name of Wisconsin Chair (although “Inc.” remained on the labels for several more years) — apparently cause for confusion in the 1936 testimony.

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Articles of Organization
Of
The New York Recording Laboratories

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Article I.

The undersigned, all of them adults and residents of the state of Wisconsin, have associated and do hereby associate themselves together for the purpose of forming a corporation under Chapter 86 of the Wisconsin Statutes; the business and purpose of which corporation shall be the manufacture and selling of phonograph records, phonographs, phonograph parts, and the manufacture and sale of all things incident to the use in connection with the same…

Article II.

The name of the said corporation shall be the New York Recording Laboratories, and its creation shall be in the city of Port Washington, county of Ozaukee, and state of Wisconsin.

Article III.

The capital stock of said corporation shall be Ten Thousand Dollars ($10,000) and same shall consist of one hundred (100) shares each of which said shares be of the face or par value of One Hundred Dollars ($100).

… [The above signed] doth each for himself depose and say that he is one of the original signers of the above declaration and articles, that the above and foregoing is a true, correct, and complete copy of said original declaration and articles and of the whole thereof.

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For the most detailed history ever published of Paramount records and the people and companies behind them, be sure to check out the second, revised and expanded edition of Alex van der Tuuk’s Paramount’s Rise and Fall, available from Mainspring Press and many libraries.

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Three Paramount ads from 1919. At that early stage, its race record series was still several years away, and other than the bold advertising graphics — a Paramount specialty from the start — there was little to distinguish the label from dozens of other start-ups. The bottom ad pictures the Grafton, Wisconsin complex. The long structure on the left is the pressing plant, in a converted fabric mill. The building on the right would eventually house the legendary studio in which the likes of Skip James recorded.

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